During the 15th and 16th centuries Portugal (together with Spain) pioneered the European discovery of sea routes that were the first step in interaction between all the world’s continents — a kind of early “globalisation”?

This course traces the journeys of Bartholemew Diaz, Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco da Gama, acknowledges the role played by Henry the Navigator, whose vision made it all possible and concludes by examining the feasibility of the theory that the Portuguese, not Captain Cook, discovered Australia. Download